Collecting Modern Japanese Prints: Then & Now

This book contains several bodies of information. An introductory essay puts Japanese prints into historical perspective and gives a brief outline of techniques.

The second section, "Then," illustrated with prints by the older masters of the twentieth century, seeks to describe how we went about putting together our collection.

There should not be many surprises here since these artists, many in their seventies, eighties, and nineties, will be known andeasily recognized by anyone who has even a minor interest in modern Japanese prints.

These artists have been written about at great length elsewhere, though not perhaps from our unique viewpoint as collectors and dealers.The following section, "Between Then and Now," is a lengthy essay meant to be amusing.

In this book about collecting, this essay gives a play-by-play description of a collector and his determined search for a specific print.

It was not intended to be the ultimate in name-dropping, but was included to indicate the esteem and admiration that Japanese prints command abroad.The last section, "Now," using fifty artists with fifty illustrations to explain specific points about print collecting, gives not only objective facts about each artist and his work but also includes anecdotes that may help a collector better recognize and remember them.

Some of these artists have already been briefly mentioned in the "Then" section.

We wish to state that not all of the artists talked about are artists whom we handle in our gallery; we also hasten to point out that ail of the artists whom we do carry are, of course,included here.

We have presented all of the prints in full color, in as large aformat as possible, so that the art lover can savor the details of each work.